ARTICLE Spiritual Abuse Book Lists – Categorized and Chronological

“FUTURISTGUY” SPIRITUAL ABUSE RESOURCE PAGES:

Spiritual Abuse Article Index – Includes all series and individual posts on futuristguy writings on spiritual abuse topics, plus links and one-paragraph descriptions. Also includes links to multiple case studies and archives on spiritual abuse.

Spiritual Abuse Book Lists – Two extensive lists of primary Christian books on spiritual abuse – categorized and chronological – and tips for how to use each.

Introduction

I’ve been working on two reference/resource lists for a while now – and am presenting them in two versions: chronological order, and alphabetical within several key categories. Each serves a unique purpose. Both use a select list (but I’m trying to get it more and more comprehensive over time). I’m looking for Christian books primarily, plus a few that are from other religious/spiritual backgrounds and some academic volumes. I’m also including a few select titles on spiritual abuse and cults that are now considered “classic,” regardless of whether they are Christian in their perspective or not. Overall, the lists include books that deal with such topics as:

Top Three Most Common

Theological Problems in Malignant Ministries

There’s an interesting pattern that I recognized a while back when I was working on a comprehensive list of Christian books about spiritual abuse that have been published since about 1990. I included books from every theological bent possible.

I didn’t do a list and run a tally, but the impression kept lodging in my memory and distilled out that the three *theological* problems mentioned most often were:

Authoritarian leadership and some variation on the Shepherding Movement.

Prosperity gospel, where God’s blessing on you/your ministry is supposedly validated with wealth.

It’s all insidious, but it does seem that maybe Word of Faith shows up more often in the charismatic zone of theology, while Prosperity Gospel in the most baptistic zone. Meanwhile, some form of Shepherding seems to undergird all malignant ministries and sick church systems. The worst of the worst will have all three conjoined in a “toxic trifecta.”

P.S. After I really started paying more attention to spiritual abuse survivor blogs starting in about 2008, it still took me something like three more years before I finally understood why those who’d been blogging on the subject kept saying, “The issue isn’t legalism, it’s authoritarianism.”

For those who are Narnia fans, maybe it’ll help to see legalism as a counterfeit of what Aslan does in singing the world into existence in *The Magician’s Nephew*. But instead of good things spring up out of the ground at the sound of His voice, all kinds of corrupt, evil, zombie-ish things spring out of the grounds from where authoritarian leaders sing out their commands.

Spiritual Abuse Resources – The Chronological Version

See the following link for a Chronology of Books on Spiritual Abuse and Recovery. The books there are clustered into five-year periods from 1976 to 2015, and publications go through early 2012. If you know of additional titles, please feel free to let me know via the Contact page. From this grouping technique, we may see some patterns about what issues were emphasized in what eras.

I wanted to put these books in chronological order, as a potential study tool for understanding how the history of wider Church-based concern about “malignant ministry” has developed. This is in part because, as a 20-something-year-old, I endured a devastating church split that came closer to claiming my faith than anything before or since. That was in 1978, and all I had back then were the Scriptures, a few friends to process things with, and a tenuous clinging onto Jesus Christ, that gradually over time turned into a tenacious commitment. It would be a dozen years before some of the very first (and also what have turned out to be some of the very best) resource books were published for survivors of such horrific experiences. Somewhere along the line, it just made sense for me to do my own research writing on spiritual abuse, toxic systems, and recovery because I knew from experience what it was like not finding information to answer relevant questions.

Spiritual Abuse Resources – The Categorized Version

General Resources

Bullies, Leaders, and Enablers with Personality Disorders

Cults and Extreme Abuse Organizations

This page represents a long-term project of creating an annotated bibliography on subjects specifically related to spiritual abuse and recovery. I will work on it when I can …

The first stage involves merely listing a group of books and linking them to their webpage either on Amazon or on the publisher’s website. This is not everything available on the overall subject of spiritual abuse; it is a select list.

Second is adding descriptions, reviews, and/or additional links for each book.

Third is creating some kind of cross-indexing for researching such core topics as aspects of specific theologies that often lead to spiritual abuse. (Abuse can happen in any Christian theology or denomination – however, certain theologies definitely are more susceptible, given their perspectives on authority, perfectionism, commitment, maturity, etc.)

Three notes: First, I have chosen books that I have already read, or intend to read, that are directly relevant to different audiences and their responsibilities: survivors, every disciple, leadership team members, and congregations as a whole. I have tracked a lot of these books since suffering through a nasty church split in the late 1970s. Some of the newer titles are ones gleaned from other bibliographies or reference lists, but in both cases, I spent a significant amount of time surfing for publisher descriptions, outlines, and reader reviews to finalize my selection for this resource list.

Also, nearly all of the books in this bibliography present a Christian perspective. Those from other philosophical or religious points of view are included because they deal with specific issues that the Christian books might not, or bring in the perspective of other professions or disciplines, such as legal, psychological, organizational development, etc.

Finally, I think it would be instructive to compile as comprehensive of a list as possible of Christians books directly dealing with topics of spiritual abuse, church discipline, malignant leaders, etc. – and then think them through in chronological order by year of first publication. (Many of the core books have gone into revised editions or reprints. When that’s the case, I’ve listed multiple publication years.) That would allow us to consider additional patterns that emerge from the historical flow of events and topics of concern over the past few decades. Such a study could yield some intriguing principles from the past that will help us in the future.

So – here are overviews of the current sections in the bibliography. (I may recategorize them once I’ve gotten a more complete listing.)

1. General Resources. Most of the books in this section address a broad combination of issues related to spiritual abuse and recovery, and are written at a basic to intermediate level. The approaches and combinations vary, based on the intended purposes and primary audiences: survivors, their family and friends, pastors and other church leaders, counselors, theologians, trainers, researchers, etc. Some books serve as general introductions, others are more of a case study (such as the Word-of-Faith and Shepherding Movements).

2. Bullies, Leaders, and Enablers with Personality Disorders.There are many intermediate and advanced books available on the personality disorders and personas are often displayed by those who bully others. Most of the books written at those levels are for counselors, therapists, and people in charge of workplace issues. I have selected a few such technical books, plus others that are written at a more popular level for the everyday person who needs an overview of how someone with such a personality disorder acts and how to work with/around them successfully.

3. Cults and Extreme Abuse Organizations.This section includes classic and contemporary resources on “cults” – organizations at the more extreme end of the spectrum of belief and behaviors – as well as abusive practices to keep people from leaving. These kinds of cults typically have theology that is boldly anti-biblical, and leaders who are exceptionally charismatic and/or controlling. They use a series of techniques to “program” followers to the point where they will engage in activities that are unethical, illegal, immoral, and even self-destructive for the sake of the leader and/or organization. So, cults represent in highly concentrated form what can happen in the run-of-the-mill church or ministry that becomes extremely toxic.

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965; Ace Trade, 2005). A classic work of sci-fi/speculative fiction that focuses on the dynamics of almost every source of abuse of power imaginable – family, gender, technology, profession, artisanship, genetics, political, cultural, etc.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949; Plume, 1983). A classic work of dystopian literature that embodies all kinds of mind-control and behavior-modification tactics, which typically show up in some form in extreme/cult groups.